Host 1: 00:00 Podcasting from southern California, this is On The Net, your go-to for everything you need to know about how to get your business online and keep it there—brought to you by Lunarpages. We’ll help you navigate the mystifying ins and outs of doing business in today’s digital era. From web hosting to ecommerce to security and protection, if it has to do with your online presence, we’ve got it covered. Let’s get started.

Host 2: 00:30 Hello everyone. Welcome to On The Net, where it’s all about your online presence. Thanks for joining us! This podcast is designed to make doing business online easy for web designers, developers, bloggers and online marketers of every shape and size. Whether you are new to buying web hosting or running a website, this podcast show will be able to answer your most burning questions. You’ve heard about SSL certificates, and hopefully your website has one, but have you ever thought about why they are so important to search engines? Popular content management systems like WordPress, Joomla!, Drupal and website builders have made it relatively easy for business owners to design, create and have a website up and running quickly and efficiently. But the downside to that is that a lot of webmasters are still unsure about how to make their website secure. Web security, privacy, cybercrime, malware, phishing and so on are important issues for online users today.

Host 2: 01:23 A website’s success truly rests on being able to protect it from security vulnerabilities through end-to-end encryption of data being transmitted between the desktop or mobile device and web servers. Now that Internet security is high on everyone’s list of priorities (even search engines), SSL certificates have become essential for anyone with a website. Before we go too much further, let’s make sure we define SSL. SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer and is the foundational security technology for establishing an encrypted link between a web server and a browser so that all sensitive data passed between the web server and browsers remain private. SSL certificates encrypt data as it is sent and received between servers and computers to ensure that a user’s activity cannot be tracked or their information stolen as it travels across the world wide web. SSL certificates provide privacy, security and data integrity for a website and it also secures visitors’ personal information.

Host 2: 02:20 An SSL cert prevents files from being corrupted as they’re transferred thus maintaining data integrity. Next time you’re online, look to see if there is a green padlock to the left of the URL and if there is an HPPS (S being the important letter) at the beginning of the URL. If there is, you’re golden because it indicates that the website is operating with SSL certificate authentication enabled. The green padlock and the HTTPS should give user’s assurance that information that is transmitted to and from your site is safe from data breaches and identity theft. We have so much more on SSL certificates in our blog, so if you want more information hop over there and check it out. But for the purpose of this podcast episode let’s continue on with what SSL certificates have to do with search engines and Google. You should already know that SSL certificates are crucial if you are an eCommerce site or if you handle sensitive customer information such as passwords and credit cards. But SSL Certificates

Host 2: 03:18 now are the foundation for the Internet shift over to HTTP/2 for greater performance. Therefore, the benefits of SSL certification don’t just end with the security, as it can sweeten your rankings, traffic, and, potentially, conversions too. To fully see the big picture here, let’s talk a walk back in history. Google rolled out updated algorithms in 2014 in favor of HTTPS websites but HTTPS sites experienced only minor ranking increases. In 2015, HTTPS became the tie breaker in rankings if the quality signals such as speed, title tags, content freshness, etc. for two different sites were equal in everything else. Search engines began prioritizing secure websites over unsecure websites in search rankings – irrelevant of any domain name, age, links or keywords. In January 2017, Google openly encouraged webmasters to make the migration to a secure site by enabling SSL certificates. Then, in 2018 Google Chrome and Mozilla updated their browsers and have started placing the “Not Secure” label on all pages served over HTTP and a red triangle indicator

Host 2: 04:29 whenever users enter text into a form on an HTTP page. Google is committed to making the web a safer place, so, besides displaying blatant warnings to users visiting a potentially harmful website any site without an SSL certificate runs the risk of disappearing from Google’s search results. Every day Google blacklists over 10,000 websites in which malware has been detected, removing them from their search results. Now that in and of itself is incentive to comply. But if it’s not, know that a warning is also displayed to users accessing these sites through Chrome, letting them know that it is an unsafe option for people and their information could be at risk. Such content warnings can only be removed once an SSL certificate is activated on a website. Not having an SSL certification can end up hurting your sales, and your reputation. In this mobile-first world we live in currently, website load speed is so very important. Did you know that https websites tend to load slightly faster than http? So, if you are not on the HTTPS boat, it might be high time to jump right in. That’ll do it for today. Thank you for listening to the latest edition of Lunarpages podcast On the Net. You can listen online but you can also subscribe to the podcast on iTunes to get future episodes delivered to you automatically. Until next time, here’s to wishing you all the best with your website endeavors. Thanks for listening and take care.

Host 1: 05:58 Thank you for listening to the latest edition of Lunarpages, podcasts On The Net. Remember, it’s all about your online presence. If you like what you heard, please share our podcast and join us next week as we take on another need to know topic around doing business in the digital era.

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